Hi there! First of all, I want to let you know: we are finally releasing VoidExpanse on Steam this month! The huge part of our success with making VoidExpanse the way it is now was possible thanks to the help of our community! We always try to quickly respond to any comments and suggestions we get and we are proud to see the results of this cooperation!

So, at this important moment I would like to remind you about all of our resources where you can follow us and get all the news about everything we are doing as well as engage in a conversation with us.

Naturally, our main platform of communications is our forums. You can also get in touch with us on Facebook and Reddit (r/VoidExpanse and r/AtomicTorch), as well as watch all trailers and other videos we happen to post on our Youtube channel. And finally, don't forget our Twitter feed where we post important stuff right at the moment it happens.

Hi everyone! New guy on the block is actually me and I am making this introduction by myself since now it is my job. So, my name is Sergey and I am a new PR and marketing manager for AtomicTorch Studio.

The main thing you need to know about me is, that I am really passionate about communication of any sort and from now on I will try to reply to everything you will ask or say to us. I've been working in game development since 2004 and started in GSC Game World (the same company that made S.T.A.L.K.E.R.) as a level-designer for their strategy projects, such as Cossacks II. In the past ten years I worked in a number of different companies. And, well, made an almost four years break to work as a criminal reporter in a major Ukrainian newspapers.

Now I am here to make already great communication between the community and our team more effective, and I am almost always in touch. Yeah, sometimes I sleep, but it happens to people. You can contact me at our forums (the Silberspeer guy), or just write me at info.atomictorch@gmail.com

Yup! :) Starting tomorrow, people in Asia will start celebrations of arrival of the new 2015 lunar year, the year of the Sheep (or Goat). And as you may know our company is also located in Asia. So, we are also going on holidays, starting February 15th until February 23rd with part of the team going back on 27th.

Frankly, we'd prefer to continue working, but alas, our office building will be closed during the holidays and we have no other choice but to partake in the celebrations :)

We will still try to be in touch during the holidays, but if we can't get a reply from us right away, don't worry, once we are back in the office we will be up to speed in no time!

Yup, that's us on the photo next to a traditional "new year tree". Happy holidays!

Today we are looking at a mod, or rather three different versions of the same mod, called "Co-pilots".

Here is a description straight from the author:

It can get lonely in the vast expanses of space. Here at Voidspace Recruiting, we offer a well trained team of professional co-pilots for you to take on your journeys through the star-systems of the Far Colonies!

The mod is compatible with the latest version of the game, so if you think it's somethind you'd enjoy - just head over to our forums and grab it!

Is it really that time? I can't believe it, honestly, but VoidExpanse is finally going to be released!

Yes, this version is very close to being the version we will send to "Gold", both on Steam and on our website. There are still a few small issues to fix, add achievements and such, but essentially the game is finally complete!

And here is our boxart for the game. To be honest I really like how it turned out to be :)

Anyway, we will have another blogpost when we release the very final version, so for now I would like to just share some of the changes in this version.

Here we go!

First of all we went over the entire game changing the balance to a lot of things. Few examples would be the experience system and how fast you progress, as well as mining, weapon stats and other elements.

We have finished the localization system and now the game could be translated to any new languages either by us or by players themselves. It will also ship with Russian language support built-in, so all of our friends from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other countries using that language could enjoy the game as well. And hopefully we can introduce more languages later!

AI has been improved as well, making pirates and other enemies a bit smarter - now they won't engage in futile fights with other NPCs and try to retreat if they are taking heavy damages.

But the primary goals of this update were, of course, the stability improvements and bugfixes! We are not quite there yet, but the game is definitely very stable and almost bug free. Give us another week or so and it will be perfect in time for release :)

Now, I'm sure many of you now ask, - "But WHEN is the release?". And to that I can say - it's going to be very soon! But before we can release we need to take care of a few things and make sure we have prepared everything for a good press coverage, so the game has better chances of being seen by the media. And if we have good sales it will mean we can continue working on the game for a long time! And that is our goal, to continue making it even better and I hope together with your help we will be able to achieve this!

Yes, VoidExpanse officially goes beta! Though, it is mostly just a name change. The game has been stable for many months already, we just didn't feel the need to change the status, since it really doesn't matter. But now that the official release is fairly soon we felt it is time to finally do so :) So, the next small patch will transition the game into "Beta" state with the subsequent release on Steam shortly after that and getting a "gold" (released) status.

But what does it all mean? It means that the game will no longer have "early access" discount and will be available for the full price at $14.99 USD, so if you were thinking of grabbing the game for cheap (just $9.99 now!) - it is your last chance! We will update our Store page with the new pricing in one week from now, so don't take too long! :)

But some of you might also ask "but what about the future of the game?". And it is really simple, actually. We would definitely like to continue working on the game even after the release! For as long as people are interested.

And lastly, we all at AtomicTorch Studio just want to say big thank you to everyone who supported us and our project! Without you we wouldn't have been able to achieve all this!

We've finally implemented unique character portraits for the key NPCs in the game. The rest of the characters will still have random portraits, but certain NPCs will now have a specific portraits like the one you see below.

Can you guess who that guy is? You can leave your guesses in the comments, but I'm sure it isn't terribly difficult to figure out :)

We are continuing working on the game, making it ready for the big release, including release on Steam. And considering how massive the game is already, and how much there is to discover, it is essential to have a comprehensive tutorial for people who may find it useful.

Surprisingly implementing the tutorials didn't take long, so here it is! There are a few other important additions too, but I will leave it for next time.

Currently we are working on VoidExpanse victory screens for different factions with different possible endings, and as a part of that our artist Andrei drew a few sketches. The one below is a sketch for the Fanatics faction. Even though it is a very simple and rough sketch I think it really gives a vibe of what the fanatics are. Especially notice the Xengatarn pendant on him.

Anyway, it is just something neat I wanted to share :) Stay tuned for actual news soon!

We are back with another small update about VoidExpanse development. This time I would like to talk about the voice acting for VoidExpanse.

Some time ago we already did some simple tests of that system, by including some voice events into the game and it proved to work out pretty nicely. So, this time we are doing it for real. We are collaborating with one prominent YouTube star that goes by the name Cr1TiKaL and he is voicing all computer phrases in the game.

If you watch his channel (Note: viewer discretion advised, some NSFW content) he has quite a unique way of pronouncing things. And if you combine it with a few "robotic" filters you get a pretty cool result.

Here are a few examples. It isn't the final version yet, but I think it gives a good idea of what the finished voice will sound like in the game.

Your browser does not support the audio element. To play the audio sample please use a modern browser. (Voice: autopilot disengaged)

Your browser does not support the audio element. To play the audio sample please use a modern browser. (Voice: access denied)

Your browser does not support the audio element. To play the audio sample please use a modern browser. (Voice: energy level critical)

Just a small update on what's going on with VoidExpanse. We've been working on many separate things required for the Steam release and it proves to be a lot more work than we anticipated initially, aside from that we are also working on the game itself.

So, here's what we've been up to recently:

Localization system implementation is progressing nicely. Localization of UI, items and pretty much everything else except quests/topics is fully implemented. Quests are a bit more complicated, but we will get to that as well. We want VoidExpanse to be available as many languages as we can. Below is an example of a game running in a different language.

Steam integration is a bit more difficult as it requires us to change how authentication is handled. It is extremely important for multiplayer to protect your identity and make your connection to the server secure among other things. Right now it is handled by our own secure server, but in case of Steam it has to be changed.

Steam extras such as trading cards, badges, emoticons and other such things have been completed. I really like how everything turned out to be. And I'm sure you will find it fun collecting all that stuff. Here's a small preview of one of the cards.

Story - we've finally finished the story for VoidExpanse. Yay! But it doesn't mean it's working as intended... yet :) It requires some more polish before we can call it finished. But never the less it's a huge milestone being able to complete the game. And remember, we have a completely separate storyline for each faction. So your choices will determine what actually happens in the galaxy and not all of these choices will lead to a happy ending.

We are continuing working with Konstantin Glazunov, our composer for VoidExpanse to bring even more different music to VoidExpanse, but aside from that we decided that it might actually be interesting to have an in depth explanation on how music is created for VoidExpanse, and here it it.

Konstantin Glazunov:

"Music creation starts with a simple basic idea, where and when a particular piece of music should exist. Some text description, a few screenshots, maybe sketches, pretty much anything goes - as it helps to start the creative process. It is very important, at least for me, to actually like the game I am creating a music piece for. Even if it's a simple concept on paper.

For VoidExpanse we decided to use darker style, you will rarely hear elements like peaceful modulations of “heaven bells” in major key or something similar. The reason for that - the game universe, according to the backstory is a dark place, with many uncovered mysteries and tragic events. Everywhere you go is danger, such as pirates or hostile aliens. But there is definitely a place for heroism of the main character or interactions with other people and many wonderful places to discover. Music follows the story, sometimes it is heroic, sometimes insinuating, and there are some places where it is completely special – for example, in the “dump” star systems (that piece of music is one of my favorites).

I have two methods for writing – to use some music parts created earlier or to compose completely new one. For VoidExpanse I opt for the latter. I start to improvise, using my digital piano or MIDI-keyboard, to see what I can come up with. We, musicians, sometimes call it "to rave" :) But thankfully the more I work on a particular project the easier it is for me to generate interesting ideas in improvisation. The most difficult thing is definitely to start, create one or two first tracks. Though there may be hard tasks at any stage of work. So, I catch good ideas from my improvisation and create some sample or draft record (or several records). The sound used for improvisation is also very important, therefore I first try to collect rough sounds for my project and utilize them in this draft.

Then it is a long way to get this piece of music into shape. The main goal is to obtain intermediate version of the track which I can send to developers. And this version, first of all, must convince me. Choosing right samples and sounds takes the majority of the time in this process, and writing instrument scores is comparatively fast. All work is done in Cubase. I use different virtual synths, samples and sample libraries. I like to combine samples of classical instruments, such as strings or brass, with modern pads and effects. This gives music depth of symphonic orchestra, while at the same time modern “acid” sounds accentuate and diversify this symphony. In VoidExpanse many technogenic sounds are used, in addition to different kinds of variable frequency filters, stereo delay, phaser and flanger effects. This adds “space” character to the music. And, of course, it complicates selection and combination of sounds for arrangement, it is much easier to work with traditional instruments.

Maybe now I need to mention, what an “arrangement” it. It is the creation of all scores (melodic or rhythmic “lines”) of all the instruments in the music piece. Process of arrangement differs from track to track. If composition has expressed melodic line or written according to “classical” scheme (for example, “contrapunctum”), then I try to denote all scores for the whole track at once and don’t care about perfect selection of sounds, because main idea is obvious anyway. Sounds will fit together a bit later. Examples of these tracks: outpost station theme (“Mechanical Realm”), combat theme “High Energy Particles”, science station theme (“Tree of Eternal Evolution”). In other cases I compose only a part of the track but use the right sounds and make this part nearly complete, in order to hear the final music "picture". Then I compose the next part, and so on. I often use improvisation to create an instrument line, selecting the most appropriate version of the score after that.

And the last stage – finalizing of arrangement and a rough mastering. This happens after developers approve my version of the track. Often all work is done towards this moment except some details; the more filled is arrangement, the easier it is for me to deliver music idea to customer. As for mastering, this is volume and frequency levelling to make the track shine and to comply with some technical specifications requested by the developers. The stage of mastering is very important, but it’s not so critical in case of game music, it comes much more critical while creating music albums and singles.

And this is how music composition for VoidExpanse comes out."

Well, that was definitely an in-depth explanation. I personally found it extremely interesting to read and I hope you did too!